Woden’s Day, March 20: The Lady of Cambridge

EQ: Why would a Puritan believe that Good Christians needBad Books?

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  • Welcome! Gather pen/cil, paper, yesterday’s work, wits!
  • Discussion: Dangerous Minds
  • Lecture/Presentation: The Lady of Cambridge
  • John Milton, Areopagitica
  • Students read excerpts individually or in groups
  • Closing Freewrite: Using (and quoting) Areopagitica

ELACC12RL-RI1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis

ELACC12RL-RI2: Analyze themes or central ideas of text

ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop

ELACC12RL4-RI4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in text

ELACC12RL5: Analyze an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text

ELACC12RL6: Distinguish what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant

ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text

ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal British texts

ELACC12RL-RI9: Analyze for theme, purpose rhetoric, and how texts treat similar themes or topics

ELACC12RL10: Read and comprehend complex literature independently and proficiently.

ELACC12W1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts

ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas

ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience

ELACC12W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis

ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames

ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions

ELACC12SL3: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, evidence and rhetoric

ELACC12SL6: Adapt speech to a variety of tasks, demonstrating a command of formal English

ELACC12L1: Demonstrate standard English grammar and usage in speaking and writing.

ELACC12L3: Demonstrate understanding of how language functions in different contexts

ELACC12L4: Determine/clarify meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases

ELACC12L5: Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, nuances

ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases

Discussion: Dangerous Minds

Yesterday you wrote on this question:

“Are there ideas that should never be published?”

I asked you to answer and explain philosophically, and your answers, on both sides, often contained formulations like these:

  • “I believe in free speech, but …”
  • “crosses the line”
  • “overreact”/“offended”
  • “to prevent chaos”
  • “The idea of this for me is not so much finding or not finding an idea that I believe should not be discussed but finding actual moral reasoning in the action of denying someone their ability to discuss and share their ideas.”

John Milton (1603 - 1674)

  • Raised a Puritan; memorizes Bible; reads almost EVERYTHING published
  • 1625: CambridgeUniversity
  • “The Lady of Cambridge”
  • Expelled: beat up a prof!
  • Gets readmitted b/c awesome
  • 1628 - 1640: Travels Europe, esp. Italy; meets dissidents, free thinkers, scientists (Galileo )
  • 1640: Returns to England; writes pamphlets for Puritans
  • Doctrine … of Divorce
  • Areopagitica (free speech)
  • Tenure of Kings (there is no “Divine Right”; regicide OK)

John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)

  • Milton is a Puritan, a Radical Christian dedicated to bringing about God’s literal Kingdom on Earth (theocracy). His argument in Areopagitica is Christian. SO –
  • Why does hesay Good Christians NEED Evil Books?

John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)

  • Like other Puritans, Milton believed Christians are responsiblefor their own individual relationship with God – cannot rely on a priest
  • Milton believed that the mind – “Right Reason” – was the gift God gave us to find His Will in scripture, nature, and ourselves.
  • Right Reason isn’t “natural” like conscience, etc.; it must be developed by hard mental work.
  • Unlike many Puritans, Milton believed in Free Will: we can knowGod’s Truth only if we seek it freely and choose it openly.
  • Righteousness, virtue, wisdom and salvation come only if we choose“good” over “evil” – sin must available as a choice and freely rejected if virtue is to be meaningful.

So now – read Areopagitica.

John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)

By the start of the seventeenth century a confluence of cultural, technological and economic forces created a new form of media, the pamphlet. They could be producedand distributed much more cheaply and quickly than books or plays, andcould more easily shape public opinion in a city with thousands of literate folk eager to govern themselves. They operated, in other words, the same way that talk radio, cable TV and the internet do today.Parliament saw this as a threat to order, and the Puritan Christians who dominated Parliament were also worried that pamphlets with the “wrong” ideas would corrupt the minds and souls of the people. So in the summer of 1643 Parliament passed a law requiring all publications – pamphlets, books, whatever – to be licensed by Parliament before being distributed. This would have meant that only pamphlets approved by Parliament, and supporting the Civil War against the King, could be published.

John Milton was an enthusiastic Puritan who fully supported Parliament, but unlike most Puritans he believed that service to God required us to think freely. He believed that Reason had to be developed by hard work, and that the freedom to wrestle with hostile and even sinful ideas, and then to choose the Good, was absolutely necessary to salvation. He wrote Areopagitica as a protest to Parliament’s law, and made a passionate Christian argument against censorship which demanded that even “evil” ideas had to be available if “good” was to mean anything. The document laid the foundation for every discussion of free speech ever since.

Milton begins Areopagitica by praising Parliament for recognizing that books are important. In fact, he argues, books are even more precious than the people who write them:

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them….Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. ‘Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; but revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.

Next he summarizes the history of censorship from ancient times, arguing that censorship has always used for political rather than actually holy purpose. In forceful language, he denounces censorship as an evil practice, hostile to God’s plan and an obstacle to the process of salvation.

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil.

As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice, with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness….

Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to removesin by removing the matter of sin …. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. Banish allobjects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste, that came nothither so ….Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how muchwe thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue: for the matter of themboth is the same; remove that, and ye remove them both alike.

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them….

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. ‘Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; but revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil.

As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice, with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness….

Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin …. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste, that came not hither so.

….Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue: for the matter of them both is the same; remove that, and ye remove them both alike.

Freewrites: Begin Reading Journal, Unit Three!

Write TWO entries today. Find TWO passages from Milton’s Aeropagitica that stimulate some ideas in your head; bring those ideas to paper. Each entry needs to format, integrate and cite a passage from Areopagitica and provide at least 100 words of reflection on what that passage means, or could mean, to you. Think especially on Milton’s main point: why good people MUST have access to evil.

  • FORMAT: Remember long/short rules
  • INTEGRATE: “According to Milton, ‘He who …’”
  • CITE: “…in the eye” (Areopagitica).

Turn In Today:

  • CLOZE: 1-6
  • READING GUIDE: Areopagitica
  • FREEWRITES: 2 Reading Journal entries for Areopagitica

CLOZE: The Lady of Cambridge

  1. John Milton was born in the year ______and died in ______.
  2. In his youth Milton memorized ______and read almost ______.
  3. He got what nickname at University?
  4. Perhaps for this reason, he did what that got him temporarily expelled?
  5. He traveled widely, and in ______he met ______, a famous ______.
  6. His most important pamphlets were about ______, ______and ______.
  7. From what physical disability did Milton suffer?
  8. In 1660, Milton was put into ______by ______because ______.
  9. Poor, disgraced, and dying, Milton composed the ______lines of Paradise Lost not by writing them down but by composing them in his ______and doing what?
  10. Milton believed that ______– the ability to discover God’s will – is not “natural,” but must be developed by ______.
  11. Unlike many Puritans, Milton believed in ______, and that we can experience righteousness only if we ______good over evil – and therefore, ______must be available (and rejected) as a ______if virtue is to be meaningful.

Reading Guide: John Milton, Areopagitica

Questions 1-3 are answered in the italicized introduction;

4-13 are answered in the selections from Areopagitica itself.

  1. What advantages did pamphlets have over books and plays?
  2. Why did Parliament’s Puritans consider pamphlets a threat?
  3. What law did Parliament pass in 1643 that caused Milton to write Areopagitica?
  4. According to Milton, “He who destroys a good book kills ______itself, kills the ______of ______., as it were, in the ______”
  5. Milton continues: “No age can restore a ______, whereof perhaps there is no great ______; but revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a ______.”
  • So, according to Milton, which is worse: killing a man or killing a book?
  • Miltonwrites that “Good and Evil …in the field of this world grow up together almost ______.”
  • According to Milton, “He that can ______and ______, with all her ______and seeming ______, and yet ______, and yet ______, and yet ______that which is truly better, he is the true ______.”
  • Milton say he “cannot praise a ______and ______.”
  • Milton writes, “Assuredly we bring not ______into the world, we bring ______much rather; that which ______us is ______, and ______is by what is ______.”
  • Milton writes that virtue which has never faced evil is “but a ______virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an ______whiteness.”
  • According to Milton, the “benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read” is that we may “______into the regions of ______and ______.”
  • Milton says that it is a mistake to suppose that we can “remove sin by removing” what?
  • He writes, “Banish all objects of ______, shut up all ______in the severest ______that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them ______that came not hither so.”